


Code Teal

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Anger, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arguing, Blood Loss, Caring, Cave-In, Concussions, Curiosity, Cutting, Escape, Fainting, Getting to Know Each Other, Hodge-Podge - Freeform, Hopeful Ending, Junk, Loneliness, Major Character Injury, Messy, Mid-Canon, Muteness, Nausea, Non-Consensual Touching, Psychic Bond, Rescue Missions, Self-Sacrifice, Trapped In Elevator, Vertigo - Freeform, lying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: “A minor villain looks after an injured major protagonist.”</p><p>Wheeljack was sure that, with his latest technology, he would make all the Autobots proud. Until the tech failed. It failed while he was sneaking through a Decepticon storage facility. Needless to say, he'd been spotted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code Teal

As soon as Wheeljack stirred from his impromptu recharge, he became aware of an intense droning deep in his audials. It swarmed behind his optics, at first disassociated but eventually settling into a fiery throb of pain. Briefly unlatching his facemask, Wheeljack coughed shakily. Even that brief jerk sent a shock over his dented shoulders and backstrut, but at least he could vent more easily.

Once his mask was back in place, the engineer tried to remember what had happened to him. His helm was pounding harder than a human heart, making it difficult to…Oh. _Oh_. This wasn’t good.

His latest invention, loosely nicknamed the View Screen, had been a type of cloaking technology which he was confident would allow him to sneak into one of the Decepticon bases. Mirage had asked if he could come, but Wheeljack suspected he just wanted to show off his own cloaking tech and had made an appeal to Prime that he wanted to test it out on his own. Prime had reluctantly agreed and Wheeljack had set off to make everyone proud.

Until the View Screen failed him. It sputtered out right after he’d entered an underground storage facility next to the Decepticon base. Needless to say he’d been spotted by the Con in the storage room and he had rushed back toward the nearby elevator to make a swift retreat.

Perhaps _that_ equipment was malfunctioning too (now that Wheeljack thought about it, the layer of dust on the lift controls should have warned him as such), but the next thing he knew he was plummeting back down for a very painful reunion with the bottom level. The piles of equipment in the storage room had been shaken to their very roots and had taken an interest in what Wheeljack heard the humans call ‘a domino effect’. He was still researching this theorem, but he recognized it well enough when the towers of machinery came sliding down on top of the elevator, collapsing it around and on top of him.

Now that he was alert again, he found that all four limbs were pinned beneath rubble. He would need to contact Prime and request a rescue. Ouch. Praying that Mirage wasn’t on comm. duty, Wheeljack summoned the call code and punched it in, receiving only static. He frowned deeply.

“We’re too far down,” a gloomy voice echoed through the debris. Alarm taking hold, Wheeljack wiggled his fingers about for a weapon, but his blaster had bounced away somewhere. Not that it would have mattered; he couldn’t get his arms free anyway.

Metal was shifting nearby. Wheeljack gulped as oily neon green glimmered into sight. The Con was crawling through a small hole, the power shovel attachment on his back widening the gap forcefully. When he was finally through, the Constructicon peeked up at him, remaining on hands and knees.

“Hello, Wheeljack,” he greeted, sounding just as nervous as Wheeljack felt. “You probably don’t know who I am, do you.” It wasn’t the tone of a question.

Wheeljack was still somewhat groggy, so he shook his head and then nodded, trying to imply that no, the Con was wrong and yes, he did know who he was. The Constructicon only looked confused, so Wheeljack tried to speak for the first time since he’d awoken.

“You’re—” A code warning keened so abruptly in his processor that his mouth screamed it too, startling his companion.

“Primus! Wheeljack, what’s wrong?!”

Trembling helplessly, Wheeljack choked out, “C-Code Teal.” Now that the alarm had been activated, all of the side effects were sweeping in with it.

“Code Teal? What’s Code Teal?!” Scavenger demanded anxiously, crawling closer and looking at him from every angle. “I can’t see anything wrong with you.”

Wheeljack leaned his aching helm back and shuttered his optics, struggling to vent evenly. Waves of nausea poured over him like molten metal, freezing him in his current position.

“How can I help?” Scavenger asked, his tone informing Wheeljack that the Constructicon wouldn’t be forced to leave without answers. His vents stuttering, Wheeljack burst out as much as he could as hurriedly as he could:

“I’ve got a helm injury that’s knocked off my audial strobes; I-I-I can’t function without ’em…” That was all he could manage before his words slurred unnaturally into an odd sort of dial tone which petered off after a few kliks.

“Okay, um…I’ll take care of it,” Scavenger assured him, the tension in his tone stealing most of the reassurance. Casting about for some sort of tool, Scavenger picked up a long, thin metal shard, twirling it between his fingers testily. He’d seen both Hook and Scrapper do this with actual utensils, though he didn’t quite see the benefit of it.

Abandoning that method, he subspaced the shard so he could use both his hands to clear away what pinned Wheeljack’s left arm. As soon as the last bolt had been removed, Wheeljack’s arm lifted. Scavenger bent backward to dodge it, taken aback. Had the engineer been faking so Scavenger would come closer and he was within reach to be strangled?

All the Autobot did was rotate the limb, bringing around circulation before returning it carefully to its place on the ground. Ex-venting quietly, Scavenger loomed once more, settling down next to the Autobot’s left arm.

“I’m going to use this to pry open your audials,” Scavenger explained as nonchalantly as he could. At Wheeljack’s flinch, he hastened to add, “Gently. I know how to handle fixtures.” With that he leaned in, returning the metal shard to his hand and carefully setting it against the outer rim of the Autobot’s left audial.

The arm did attack him then, seizing his own and jarring it as forcefully as it could. Wheeljack didn’t have that strong of a grip in this condition, but surprise caused Scavenger to drop the makeshift scalpel.

“Primus!” Scavenger blasphemed again, brushing off the Bot and glaring at him. “Don’t _do_ that, Wheeljack, I could have sliced your audial open!”

Wheeljack nodded angrily and then immediately seemed to regret it, slumping deeper into his space among the rubble, vents heaving. Scavenger crossed his arms in a show of triumph, but in truth he didn’t feel that good about his companion’s suffering.

“I’m going to do this, Wheeljack. It’s for your own good,” he proclaimed, retrieving the shard and again setting it against the audial rim. Wheeljack cringed belatedly, earning a stern look.

“Hold _still_. Please.”

Wheeljack seemed like he wanted to respond, but what came out was a lurching whimper of discomfort.

“You can’t speak that way,” Scavenger added thoughtfully, his visor lighting up a moment later. “What’s your ICS code?”

Wheeljack remained motionless, apparently stunned by the question. Internal comm. system codes were only given to family and close friends, those one could trust. Scavenger shrugged.

“I know we’re enemies, but I’m a gentlemech. At least I asked. Bonecrusher might have smacked it out of you. Hook might have just picked it out of your CPU! Scrapper…” He paused when Wheeljack waved him off with an inattentive hand. The hand dangled there for a moment and then his fingers began painstakingly forming numbers.

He was actually giving Scavenger his ICS code. He _trusted_ him with it. Elation burst through Scavenger’s spark as he opened a channel with the code.

:Hello?:

:Hey, Scavenger.: Wheeljack’s ICS voice wasn’t as bleary as his utterance, but Scavenger could still tell he was finding it hard to form words. :My audials are…really sensitive. Hurts when you touch ’em.:

Scavenger didn’t like how this was sounding. :How sensitive? Like Praxian-doorwings sensitive? **::Frell::** , a-medic’s-hands sensitive?:

:Praxian-doorwings, I think,: was the jaded response.

This news should have brought relief, but instead it unnerved the Constructicon. Wheeljack said he had a helm injury; how was Scavenger to know if what he said was valid?

:Well…like I said, I’ll be gentle,: he told Wheeljack at last.

:You said that?: Wheeljack didn’t seem to care if Scavenger answered his question or not, shuttering his optics. From the descent of static through the ICS channel, Scavenger realized that the Bot was unconscious. Seizing this opportunity, he began his work, prying up the audial covering where he could and slicing it where he had to. Finally he set aside the scalpel and carefully lifted the detached plating, peering with awe at the wires and the hefty lightbulb inside. His awe soon turned to worry, though, when smoke began trailing through the air in front of his face. The source was what looked to be a blackened pouch in the area furthest away from Wheeljack’s helm.

Helplessness twisted Scavenger’s chassis more intensely than some of Mixmaster’s concoctions. He wasn’t Hook. What could he do to help Wheeljack?

_Help?_

Why did he even want to help this Autobot? They were enemies. Maybe…it was because Wheeljack was trusting him—more than his own brothers usually did.

:What’s wrong with it?:

Scavenger startled, glancing forward to see Wheeljack’s optics had returned online from stasis.

:Uh…well, there’s a pouch-type-thing…A gel pack, maybe? It’s smoking.:

:Is the pack blue or gray?: There was a desperation in Wheeljack’s voice that Scavenger could almost feel himself.

:It’s gray.:

A pause. :There should be a tear in it somewhere. Look for it,: Wheeljack ordered impassively.

Scavenger soon found it and reported as such. Wheeljack, in turn, muttered an oath that Scavenger had ever only heard Megatron say. It made him hunch his shoulders in shame, certain he had failed yet another mech who relied on him. For quite a time he and Wheeljack couldn’t look at or message each other. Finally…

:Scavenger. I’m gonna ask you to do somethin’, okay? You probably won’t like it, but it’s not like I can actually stop you if you wanna just leave me here to rust.:

Wheeljack watched intently as Scavenger perked up, puzzlement igniting his visor.

:Energon,: Wheeljack admitted at last. :That’s what belongs in that pack; it’s what fuels my strobes. My strobes keep me balanced. If they’re out, I get so dizzy that I can’t _sit up_ , much less fight. I feel like I wanna purge my spark up right now, so…I need energon.:

:You want me to give energon to you?: Scavenger questioned.

:Yeh.:

:There aren’t any energon crates in this entire storage room. That means…it would have to come _from_ me.:

:Right.: Wheeljack’s optics flickered down as the magnitude of what he was asking came to both of them. :Like I said, I wouldn’t be able to stop you if you wanna go, but…: His CPU, confounded by the loss of its weighing scales, could offer only more stasis to him until the problem was repaired. :Think about it,: he murmured before he signed out.

When he reactivated, he was overcome with a strange sense of serenity. Both of his legs were still pinned beneath junk—somehow his right arm had been freed—but he felt…genuinely _okay_. He turned his helm without nausea and saw, to his disbelief, that Scavenger was sitting by his legs with his left hand pressed into the crook of his right arm.

That arm…was bleeding profusely.

“Holy Primus,” Wheeljack gasped aloud, audials pulsing teal in his peripheral vision on both sides as he sat up. (Scavenger must have freed his right arm when he went to work on the right audial.) “I asked for enough blood to fill the gel packs, Scavenger. You’re _hemorrhaging!_ ” To his horror, he saw stray splashes of energon forming small puddles around him. There were also some half-dried splotches on his armor.

“The packs kept sp-p-pilling,” Scavenger stuttered, droplets seeping through his fingers as he shook with hypovolemic shock. “’Till I patched them. Some of the mesh I collected _did_ come in handy.”

Wheeljack started to reply but quickly fell silent when he heard muffled voices from the other side of the half-collapsed junk mountain.

“—avenger!”

“Scav, you in there?!”

Inaudibly begging Primus for mercy, Wheeljack prepared himself for a firing line even as he reactivated the View Screen technology. The hole Scavenger had crawled through before became a gap in the debris and Scrapper appeared on the other side.

“Scavenger! What happened to you?!”

“An Autobot,” Scavenger whispered. Wheeljack clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming as the Constructicon he’d trusted continued, “He t-told me he wanted my energon and he…took it.”

“And where’s the piece of scrap now?!” Bonecrusher snarled.

 _The moment of truth. Too bad you didn’t think to send your last will and testament to anyone, Jackie_. Wheeljack braced himself.

“He escaped.”

“You couldn’t fight him off?” Mixmaster sighed, shaking his helm in disappointment. “Or at least keep him here?”

Scavenger sank onto his side, venting heavily and saying nothing.

“Long Haul, take him to Hook,” Scrapper ordered.

When the Constructicon team had gone, Wheeljack cleared the debris from his legs and stood shakily. A Decepticon had deceived other Decepticons. Did that make him more a Decepticon than ever?

He would need to change his ICS code if he didn’t want Scavenger contacting him, he realized as he used the alternate exit the rest of the Constructicons had created in lieu of the elevator.

But he had other things to do. He could work out the remaining bugs in the View Screen, for one. He needed to replace the coverings for his audials that Scavenger had cut out too.

Sure. Changing the code could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!! I'd really appreciate it if you commented and told me what you thought! <3


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